Museum
This is a monument.
It was born from us a town illegitimate; we never married.
A great hall of artifacts, plucked still-gunked from our livers,
Others clean-picked from our birdy bones.
Over there you had loved me, there I spooled my sobs.
Here, the streetcar - windows fogged with our laughs.
We would visit this dead museum,
with crumpled dollars to smash through the box-office slats.
We would laugh at the silly, dead fossils.
Now I am alone, inhabiting it like restless taxidermy.
I call you through each dusty chamber,
Every dull ceramic and jaded mask.
I regress to a baby one hundred miles a moment,
My nightgown heavy and helplessly slumping down my shoulders
And not even your body: dried, tattooed, is on display.
Your insides are not carefully dissected, labelled in a looming case.
Your wings and your pulsing pink eyes lay on no proud board,
Your legs are not zip-tied, toes not tagged and inkily named.
You are not Americana Exotica -
You are more elusive.
You're exploring one thousand Arabias
While I breathe sarcophagus air,
Befriend the flogged and leathered skins.
There is only my lonely feet.
Copyright © Akira Gollihue | Year Posted 2015
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